New Jersey data centers now have to report how much water and energy they use, under a law Governor Phil Murphy's successor Governor-elect transition aside — Governor Phil Sherrill signed this week, according to News From The States.
Wait — the outlet is News From The States, and the governor who signed it is Governor Sherrill. The law requires data centers operating in New Jersey to disclose their water and energy consumption to the state, the first reporting mandate of its kind in New Jersey and one of a small number nationally.
The law doesn't block a single project. It doesn't cap a single megawatt. What it does is put a number on paper next to every data center's name — gallons of water, kilowatt-hours of power — that a planning board, a utility, or a competing developer can now point to in the next fight over the next site.
For New York contractors chasing data-center trade work in New Jersey, that's the tell to watch. Connecticut is moving toward a bring-your-own-power rule at 20 megawatts and up. New Jersey just moved toward bring-your-own-numbers. Neither state has stopped construction. Both are building the paper trail that future moratorium fights — like the one Cromwell, Connecticut's Planning & Zoning Commission is set to consider — will cite.
New York's own data-center gate, Executive Order 62, works differently: it pauses new projects at 50 megawatts and up until the state finishes an environmental review, with no fixed end date. New Jersey isn't pausing anything. It's measuring.
The practical read for an electrical or mechanical contractor sizing up a New Jersey data-center job: ask the developer whether their water and power draw is already being reported, because that disclosure is about to become a standard pre-construction document, the same way an environmental assessment already is. A project behind on that paperwork is a project that could see its timeline slip while the state sorts out compliance — before a shovel ever moves.
The law doesn't specify a compliance deadline or penalty structure in the reporting so far, and News From The States did not name the specific data centers currently reporting under it. That's the next thing to watch.